#90: What To Do When A Project Starts To Suck

We all know that deflated feeling when you’ve lost your mojo for a major project or renovation. So how do you reignite that excitement or energy you had for it in the first place? We’ve struggled with this at the beach house lately, so we’re sharing five tips for combating project fatigue. Plus spring is a big time for home maintenance, so we have an easy way to guarantee that you’ll never forget about routine tasks again – plus a new trick for barreling through those other little lingering projects our your to-do list. We also share how we rediscovered a date night idea, and why we’re getting called out for fueling a despised decorating trend.

You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, and Spotify – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.

What’s New

These are the air filters we buy in bulk from Amazon (a 6-pack for about $34), although we need different sizes for each floor. We get pretty a basic dust filter since we don’t have allergies or a pet hair issue (Burger has very short hair and hardly sheds), but you could do the same with any model.

I also mentioned FilterEasy as a slightly pricier solution on the podcast, but I realized later that Amazon’s “Subscribe & Save” feature could also replicate this for you at a lower price (they auto-deliver on your schedule and build-in a discount). It doesn’t seem to be available on all filters and many filters come in 2-, 4-, and 6-packs so it might be hard to get a single filter to show up at the right time, but it might be something to look into.

And no, those air filters don’t actually fit in that vent as shown. These go in our system in the garage, but that’s not nearly as photogenic.

Updates

You can hear the full open-concept bathroom discussion in Episode #88, where you can also respond to the poll if you’d like to weigh in.

And Episode #85 was where we spoke about the backward book “trend,” which we apparently included in our first book, Young House Love, back in 2012. Below are a couple of the “offending” pages:

That last one on the far right is the back cover. So literally the BACK of our book has BACKWARDS BOOKS on it. *Sigh* When I told Sherry this she laughed for a good five minutes.

Lastly, you can hear the original discussion of Consumer Reports’ review of the best paint brands in Episode #81.

Project Fatigue

That photo above is from our kitchen remodel here at home, which was another project that took many many months and got us down at least a few times in the process (you can read more about that remodel here).

As we mentioned, one helpful exercise was to look at before photos to see how far we’ve come (you can see lots of them here). This used to be the bathroom shown above! I mean, the comparison is pretty crazy. And when you look at it that way, it’s a lot easier to see some major progress (and to be grateful that the room isn’t collapsing in on itself anymore).

We’re Digging

These are the shoes that Sherry raved about feeling like socks, and a photo so you can assess the toe cleavage situation yourself. Sherry almost went for this color or this color but thought black would be the most versatile for her (go figure!) and they also come in a round toe option as well. I’m relieved to report that they don’t look like someone put their foot into a Desani bottle, and it’s also pretty cool that they’re machine washable. Don’t forget to google for a coupon code.

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